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A china backing for Tiger Woods

Thursday was a one-month anniversary of a barbarous mop shot going viral and a news that Tiger Woods had been arrested for DUI. In a days that followed a May 29 occurrence in Jupiter, Fla., I’ve been struck by a continued caring players I’ve interviewed have shown toward Woods—including those who have reached out to Tiger as he publicly certified to issues with medication pain drugs and nap disorder.

The tinge was set when Martin Kaymer posted a intense video around Twitter on Jun 1 and continued by this week, with Jack Nicklaus weighing in along with Patrick Reed and Justin Thomas. Whether we was during a Travelers Championship in Hartford, or articulate to Phil Mickelson during a KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Chicago, players were discerning to lend their support to Woods.

Early reports are encouraging. Presidents Cup captain Steve Stricker and 2016 Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III told me they had been communicating with Tiger, who reportedly started diagnosis on Jun 13. While Woods might not be in a position to horde a Quicken Loans National this week, he has been deliberating with Stricker about still being with him and a U.S. group as a clamp captain during Liberty National in late September.

“We had a good talk,” Stricker pronounced from his home in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “He sounds unequivocally good, holding caring of a issues he has. He’s unequivocally most dedicated to removing better. He was relocating brazen and he sounded unequivocally certain and unequivocally happy, and is still dismissed adult to be partial of a Presidents Cup team.”

The players we talked to seemed some-more endangered about what Stricker called “the tellurian element” than Woods’ personification career. “The summary I’ve been on is we unequivocally don’t caring about him as a player,” Love told me. “We caring about him as a friend. We’re perplexing to get that indicate opposite to him. It’s not his celebrity. We wish to know what’s going on. We wish to know how we can help. That’s been my summary to him, and he gets it, he appreciates that.”

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

Love is one of several players to importance with Woods that they wish to see him improved either he plays golf again or not.

Mickelson wouldn’t contend he’s talked or texted with Woods, yet intimated he had. “One of a things I’ve schooled about from going by a tough times are dual things,” Mickelson said, referencing a cancer conflict his wife, Amy, endured. “Show up, and it’s improved to contend a wrong thing than to contend nothing.”

Mickelson did say, though, that eventually he’d like to see Woods personification again, not for a raise of a game, yet a raise of Tiger as a person. “I consider he’s happy when he’s on a golf course,” Mickelson said. “So we wish this latest [back] medicine helps him get healthy to where he can play and use and compete. we consider he’s happiest when he’s competing.”

Brett Favre was a same approach about competition, and he came behind from diagnosis for painkillers to win Super Bowl XXXI in Jan 1997, a same deteriorate he willingly enrolled in a NFL’s substance-abuse program. Just final week, a mythological former Green Bay Packers quarterback was personification in Wisconsin in a luminary hasten during a PGA Tour Champions eventuality hosted by Stricker. He is featured in commercials for Wrangler jeans and Tommy Copper sleeves. From a dim place to a Super Bowl feat and Hall of Fame career, is it too most to consider that Woods could reinvent himself a approach Favre did?

Probably. While kick up, Favre didn’t have a fused back. But it’s unequivocally not about that. At this indicate it’s about Tiger and his health and a support he’s removing where he substantially never approaching it.

“Everybody has been seeking me since we’re close,” Love said. “I was with another actor [Tuesday] while caddieing for [son] Dru in a use turn for a Web.com [tournament in Nashville], and he asked me a same thing. The actor said, ‘He unequivocally doesn’t comprehend how many people caring for him.’ ”